


Just Visiting

by thedevilchicken



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 17:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Loki and Skurge escaped the afterlife together. Now Skurge works the door at the only bar in New Asgard, and he tells himself he's not just waiting for the next time Loki visits.





	Just Visiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theae/gifts).

Skurge has grown his hair since he came back from the dead. 

He didn't do it because he minded people staring at his tattoos because, well, frankly, he knows that's why he got them in the first place; it's just that at some point it started seeming easier to get it cut every couple of months instead of shaving it every few days. Besides, razorblades are pricey on Midgard and he's got to watch his budget. That's something he misses about the afterlife. 

He's grown his hair and without his armour or Hela's axe, he looks more or less like anyone else in New Asgard. He misses the old Asgard, though, and not just because he didn't have to worry about online banking or how to program a washing machine so it doesn't shrink his jeans. He works security at the only pub in town and it pays well enough but he didn't exactly grow up dreaming of throwing drunk Asgardians out of a Midgardian alehouse to make a living. Especially since it means he spends most of his time sober. 

Some of the others drink to forget the things that happened, like Hela and then Ragnarok. It seems to work for them, too - he sees them all laughing and joking like they did back in the halls on Asgard, and like he knows the dead do in Valhalla. Not many of the Einherjar made it to Midgard alive, so here he's one of their strongest, except the Valkyrie and maybe Thor when he's not falling-down drunk. Sometimes he calls Korg and Miek from the phone behind the bar just so he doesn't have to throw him out when he's had too much, because that never seems quite right. Then he trudges home, back to his little house on the outskirts of town, past the part where the pavement stops and the path's just well-trodden earth. For part of the year he can ride a bike to work and back, but in winter the snow's too deep for that. It's January now, so the snow's too deep. He's been there for long enough that he remembers the names of all the months and the seasons that go with them.

He's grown his hair and it needs cutting but right now, but he can't say he minds it. The extra bit of length it's got, that makes it look a mess when he's been out in the wind or he takes off the woolly hat that an old lady in town knitted for him when he found her missing cat, makes it easier to pull. He didn't mean to find the cat; it was hiding in Loki's house, shedding fur all over his spare cape, and he recognised its furry face from the Neighbourhood Watch app Korg has somehow got everyone in town to use. He didn't mean to grow his hair, either; it's just a happy kind of coincidence that it's long enough for Loki's fingers to tangle in. It's not like he could've planned it, after all. He never knows when he's going to turn up, or even if the last time was the _last_ time. 

Sometimes he goes to Loki's house even though he knows he's not there. He's like a caretaker, sort of - he makes sure no one's broken in and no old ladies' cats have peed on the furniture and when the pipes burst last winter, he called a plumber to get them fixed. Loki's furnished the place with things he's brought back from other planets and somehow he's ended up with the biggest house of all of them, maybe because he used a gold ingot the size of Skurge's forearm that he brought back from who even knows where to pay a team to build it. It's not far from Skurge's house, really, just a five minute walk further out of town along the cliff, not far from where they arrived from Hel. It doesn't matter that there's no road to get there, because Loki just lands his ship in the garden. Skurge has given up trying to keep the flowerbeds looking nice since he crushed the roses last year, so he just mows the lawn from time to time. 

The thing is, though, Loki's never really there. He's usually off gallivanting through space because he hates being on Midgard and Skurge can't really blame him for that, if he's honest. Loki made some kind of deal with the glowy-handed wizards that he wouldn't use magic while he's on their planet and then they did something Skurge really doesn't understand that means he _can't_ use magic while he's there, but Skurge knows he wants to. He hates not being able to, like he couldn't in Valhalla, so it makes sense that the nice new house that kind of looks like a miniature castle is empty most of the time. There's a kind of magical barrier around the planet that wipes out Loki's abilities when he passes it. Skurge thinks he'd hate that, too, if he knew any magic. He doesn't have the knack for it, though. Loki tried to teach him once, out of boredom, but it didn't go well.

Loki's never really there, but he's there now, sitting at the kitchen table as the sun rises outside. He's wearing one of Skurge's sweaters that's getting threadbare in the elbows and the bottom half of a pair of thermal pyjamas he bought for when it gets really cold. Loki can't change his outfit in the blink of an eye like he does on other planets. One of Loki's suits is hanging in Skurge's bedroom cupboard. There's three ties all in very slightly different shades of green - at least Loki says they're different, and Skurge will have to take his word on that - hanging on the back of the cupboard door, and there's a drawer full of socks and belts and underwear and a pair of really nice leather gloves that Skurge wishes would fit him because Loki probably wouldn't notice if they disappeared. He's not there often enough for that. 

He came home from work last night and the light was on in the bedroom - he could see it all the way from where the pavement ends before he slogged through the snow, like a lighthouse so he didn't even need to fumble his phone out of his pocket and try to get the flashlight function to work with his gloves still on. Loki's boots were sitting just inside the front door, wet where the snow had melted on them, and his cape was hanging on the coat rack next to Skurge's nice leather jacket. They looked out of place. They always do, just like Loki does. He's never made himself at home like the rest of them.

He went into the kitchen and he poured himself a drink and he drank it slowly at the kitchen table before he went upstairs, like it might brace him or something for what he was going to find up there. When he went up, Loki was lounging on his unmade bed in one of Skurge's t-shirts that's at least one size too big for him because apparently he couldn't be arsed to open the drawer in the dresser and find something that actually belongs to him. He was reading the book Skurge had left next to the bed, some crime novel or other he'd borrowed from the library to help him fall asleep.

"Well, it's about time," Loki said, then he waved the book in the air. "You know, this is terrible. Did someone dare you to read it or did you lose a bet?" He dropped it carelessly onto the table by the bed and lost Skurge's place when the bookmark fell onto the floor. Skurge is used to that sort of thing, though. He just sighed and went down on one knee by the side of the bed. 

"What can I do for you, your majesty?" he asked. 

Loki frowned. "You know, Skurge, you don't seem very pleased to seem me."

"Well, I just got home from work," Skurge said. "It's past midnight. I'm tired. You know, if you always turn up in the middle of the night, people are going to start thinking you're a vampire."

"I'm fairly sure I don't want to drink your blood, Skurge."

"You know that and I know that. But no one else knows that." 

"Then maybe next time I'll aim for daylight," Loki said. "Go to sleep. We'll continue when you're better rested." 

Skurge was too tired to question or object. He was much too tired for Loki's usual crap after him being away for maybe three months, maybe more, so he stripped down to his boxer shorts and undershirt and got into bed, and Loki turned off the light. Six hours later, he woke up with Loki's hand around his cock. He felt himself start to stiffen. But then Loki got up and left the bed and went downstairs; Skurge supposed that was one way to get him to follow. 

He knows you don't trust people, especially not people as high up as a prince. You can't take them at their word, he's always known that, and Hela reminded him of it more than once, so when he put his jeans on and went downstairs and Loki said, "So, how are things on Earth?" Skurge just pressed his lips into a flat line and shrugged his shoulders. 

"You know, that wasn't rhetorical," Loki said. "Usually, when I ask a question it's because I expect an answer." 

Skurge grimaced. "What sort of answer do you expect?" he asked, and Loki frowned sharply. 

"You could start with the truth," he said. "Or an entertaining lie, at least. Don't just shrug your shoulders at me, Skurge; it's common and you know how I feel about that." 

He does know how Loki feels about that. They were dead in Valhalla for less than a year but he knows how Loki feels about most things, and he's also fairly sure he's not going to change now. He used to want to, before Ragnarok, before Hela, before Loki pretending to be Odin before that, back when he was still a soldier, because he never really fit in with the Einherjar - he used to want to talk like them, and walk like them, and say the same sort of things as them, and pretend he wasn't a stonemason's son. None of his family had ever gone to war. They built halls and trained horses and the closest any of them ever got to battle before him was making swords for other men and women to wield. Loki seems to think he's some kind of outcast, but he's not. What's left of their people remember him helping Thor save them. What's left of their people remember Skurge holding an axe that Hela made. Only one of them is ever going back to Valhalla, and Skurge knows it's not him. 

"I threw your brother out of the pub last week," he said. "He said he couldn't believe he was getting sent home and didn't I know it was his day? Thor's Day. You know. Named after him." He sat down at the table. He rubbed at the place in the wood where he'd carved his own name. "Well, it wasn't Thursday. It was Saturday." He shrugged again, deliberately. "That's how it is here. How are things wherever the fuck you go to?"

Loki got up. Loki straddled Skurge's thighs on his dining chair and the combined weight of the two of them, neither of them particularly small or light, made the wood creak. He ran his fingers into Skurge's hair, curled them into fists, and used them to ease his head back. And that's where he is right now. 

Loki's teeth scrape his throat. Loki's mouth finds the pulse just under his jaw. Skurge thinks he can probably feel the way his heart's racing. It's his own fault, really - he's got no one to blame but himself. The person he fell for is a melodramatic dick who thinks Skurge has nothing better to do with his life than wait for him to visit. The worst part is, he's not exactly wrong about that. Skurge just wonders why Loki even bothers coming.

He's thought about leaving New Asgard, but he's not sure where he'd go. Texas was too hot. There's too many people in New York. One of the locals told him his accent sounds British so maybe London or Manchester or something like that, because it's not like they're not allowed to leave - the others just choose not to, but some of them might prefer it if he did.

"Come with me and find out," Loki says, against his skin, and Skurge closes his eyes. 

He'd really like to believe that's a real offer, but he doesn't. He thinks back to Valhalla and the two of them escaping death together and all the things that they could do if only Loki really meant it, but he doesn't. In a lot of ways, Loki's exactly like his sister was. He hates to hear it, but it's true.

He doesn't believe him. But what he says is, "Sure. I'm ready when you are." 

Loki sits back. He looks at him. "Now?" he says. "I have a job for you. If you're not too busy throwing my brother out of bars, of course."

He's never been more ready for anything.


End file.
